Friday, May 31, 2013

This is just one of my fave camp out photos of my son when he was a cute little cub scout. I used the New "Happy Camper" collection by Echo Park and I had to do the triangles of the cute campy papers - kind of reminds me of tents. I roughed up the edges to go with the whole camp out thing. And don't you just love the little fox! My son would like the lantern and arrow because he loves archery.

Check out all the little tents, campers, animals and other cute elements in this collection HERE

Monday, May 27, 2013

Our Design Teams at Echo Park Paper and Carta Bella Paper are combining efforts to bring you
the latest and greatest in summer paper crafting ideas. Each Tuesday
from June through August, we'll share a special "Summer Camp" post both at Echo Parks Blog and on the Carta Bella blog that includes a project and a FREE
project instruction PDF, which you can download at your leisure. Watch
for bonus contests, special chats, prizes and more posted on both blogs
throughout the summer months. Mark your calendars and bookmark these blogs for a summer of
creative fun. With projects designed for both kids and adults, it's
going to be a creatively-charged summer!

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Since I was on a roll with this album for our trading pins, I continued on to page 2. This is going to be a seriously large album if I don't start doubling up on the photos of pin. We like pin trading. LOL! Again I am using the Echo Park Paper Photo Freedom system and for today's layout I chose the Echo Park "Happy Go Lucky" collection because of the cuteness and navy blue :) Seriously cute colors and three of these pins are faves of mine because they are from the resorts we have stayed in: All Star Movies, Pop Century, and Caribbean Beach Resort.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

What do you and your family collect? Most people I know have a few collections in their homes. Well when my dad and I found out about Disney Pin Trading at the parks, we knew we had to give it a try. I was a little nervous about going up to cast members and trading the first day but I explained to my son, who was 10 at the time, and he was out of the room the first morning and already trading with the Cast Member at our Disney Store in our resort! He was good at it too! He had his eyes on some Indiana Jones poster pins and ended up finding three of them during that trip.

My dad loved the idea but he was not going to be trading for himself so he would see a pin he liked and make me go trade for it. LOL! That last trip with him was really special to me. I am glad to have his pins in my collection now. Since we have been collecting since '02, we have alot of pins and alot of stories to tell about them. I haven't scrapped them til now though and I have forgotten most of the stories. Luckily I did take trip notes and some of the pin stories are in those notes.

I have decided that the best way to scrap soooo many pins is to use the Photo Freedom pages by Echo Park Paper. I will use a variety of papers and products, but I think the Photo Freedom pocket pages are the way to go. For my first page I had photos of our lanyards and a few pins. For non-pin traders, the lanyard holds the pins that you plan to be trading while you are in the park. I never wear my fave pins because even with good pin backs they will fall off. I lost a couple on our first trip because my camera is usually around my neck too.

I took alot of photos of the Caribbean Beach Resort and one of the best things was that when you get up and walk to the main building of the resort, the view is just so great. I love all the different colored building units. The one across from us was my fave in the yellow, blue and white.

I pulled a bunch of embellishments that I liked for these photos and layered them in a column down the right side of the page over a block of kraft cardstock that I have embossed. The stamp set that I used for this page is the May "Destination Unknown" set. The little stars are stamped with an archival dye based ink and then I used a water brush with watercolor crayons. I stamped the "you are here" image on the graph looking pattered paper, cut it out and punched holes across the top so I could tear them as if they were torn from a spiral binding. Then if you look in the upper right there is a location icon that I stamped and cut out. Of course I had to add the cute Basic Grey Candy Buttons for the Mickey.

This month at Scraptastic, we are challenging ourselves to scrap a few of our older photos so I pulled a few from our Disney trip in '05. I decided to add a piece of light grey cardstock from my stash for this layout because my photos were taken when it was very overcast and I wanted them to really show up. During the 50th anniversary of Disneyland, Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom in DisneyWorld was just beautiful with all of the floral swags and characters all in gold. I took a few close ups because I knew it was only there for the year.

For a bit of fun I have added stamped stars from the "After the storm" stamp set to my background and I heat embossed with white. I also embossed the "take note" from that same set on the grey tag for my journaling. Then I have added Basic Grey Candy Buttons from the kit just scattered with the stars. I wanted a bit of gold so I covered the chipboard numbers with gold craft glitter from my stash and also added a couple of dots of glue and glitter with the Candy Buttons.

As part of this months celebration of PageMaps 7th anniversary, they have joined a PageMaps sketch with one of the monthly Colour Suites and I got to play along! Check out the CHALLENGE here for a chance to win some Echo Park Paper goodies!

This is the sketch I used for my layout:

And I found the perfect blue, green, and yellows in Echo Park's "For the Record 2: Documented collection", pink from "Bundle of Joy: Girl" and grey film strip paper from "Oh Snap". I flipped the sketch and added some vintage buttons to the button jar that I cut from patterned paper.

I thought I would share a little step out photo showing how simple the sunshine shape was to do. I always look thru my papers when I get a collection and look for designs that can be cut out. Well this sun burst is available in the 12x12 size too and that would be SO fun for a layout, but for this page I wanted just a small burst and the 6x6" is perfect.

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Here is the NSD layout that I completed yesterday with one of my favorite collections, Hipster by BasicGrey. I got the idea to xacto cut out parts of the patterned paper from one of the challenges on the BasicGrey blog yesterday. Don't forget to check out the blog for challenges and a chance to win.

I love these Star Metal Studs and the cute cute Wood Die Cuts. I had to scrap these photos because this is always what I see when I enter parks with my family. They always get thru the gates before me because they don't have bags to check like my camera bag. So I walk thru and they are staring at me all smug and they have to make a comment about it. LOL!